I had a similar interpretation to Vigilante when I finished Endwalker.

When you first meet Hydaelyn on the boat ride to Sharlayan, she tells you the following:

'Even bereft of guidance, you and your companions have accepted the burden of this star's troubled past. A conjunction has begun to form; an intertwining of your time and mine.'

Again, just prior to your departure from Elpis, Venat uses the same words:

'You may find your world to be very different. Or perhaps the erasure of our friends' memories has sown the seeds of a conjunction between us.'

Both these lines seem to imply that the loop wasn't always there, but rather that certain conditions had to be first fulfilled in order for the conjunction to occur, such as G'raha preventing the Eighth Umbral Calamity, you putting Venat's clues together and travelling to Elpis, and then the Kairos memory wipe. I suspect that only because you fulfilled the prerequisites that some of the consequences of the loop (like Argos recognizing you, or Elidibus having memories of you on Elpis) started to manifest in our timeline. That's what is meant by 'forming a conjunction'.

Likewise, when you call out Venat's name in front of the Mothercrystal, only at that point does she realize that the loop has been successfully completed:

'I see... thou didst travel into Elpis.'

If the loop was always predestined to occur, then she would have just taken this as a given. So it was also possible that you might not have met the requirements for the conjunction to happen and you might have travelled to the Mothercrystal without travelling to Elpis.